Southside

While District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldaña is still on the council, he's got a new position that allows him to work in his background of education. He has been hired by KIPP San Antonio, a network of college preparatory public schools, as the chief of engagement. Saldaña said the position is a first for KIPP.

The job comes as a big relief for the councilman, who is engaged to be married and currently lives at home with his parents. He has taught at Trinity University and Palo Alto College, but the new job will help him support his new bride and himself.

On Nov. 21, 1963, President John F. Kennedy spoke to a crowd of 10,000 people at Brooks Air Force Base. It would be one of his last presidential acts.

"I have come to Texas today to salute an outstanding group of pioneers," he said, speaking of the compression chambers and training abilities for Air Force, space and other programs. "It is fitting that San Antonio should be the site of this center and this school [Brooks Air Force Base School of Aerospace Medicine and the Aerospace Medical Center]."

Bexar County officials joined those from the Southside Independent School District to officially open the Mission City Soccer Complex, which completes the county’s Community Venues Program.

The county wanted to bring quality youth sports facilities to parts of town where there were none, or where the facilities had lost their luster or declined from a lack of maintenance or funding for improvements.

On Wednesday the Texas A&M San Antonio Foundation honored major supporters of the university with its Dream Maker Award.

The school honored a number of benefactors for their help in funding the education of some local students who otherwise could not have secured tuition assistance.

University President Dr. Maria Hernandez-Ferrier, said one of those students is Savannah Villanueva, who had a great need for tuition assistance, but other scholarships would not consider her application because of her age.

It’s pretty much just an overgrown and forbidding area on the Southside -- the space beneath the I-35 overpass between Theo and Malone -- but here your tax dollars have created something special in Ballroom Luminoso, a public art project that has won the SXSW Eco Award for Transformative Design in the Public Space Design Competition.

The transformative design award recognizes excellence in how a design shapes or reinterprets the physical environment.